A wild MSI X99S-SLI PLUS appears


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Well, nothing's wild about it, I just wanted to use that annoying line, really. Anyway, there it is. All black, too. That means it's awesome :)

 

A08bjvt.jpg

 


 

Meet our brand new #MSI X99S SLI PLUS which comes in all black. We can tell you a million stories but we want to keep everybody guessing until the launch.

 

Source (guru3d.com)

Source (facebook.com)

 
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They are. Especially with Z97, which didn't bring much else to the table. MSI had this "all black" I/O shield. Wow, right? Only for select boards! And Gigabyte had CPUFAN2 header mentioned in advertising materials. Definitely an innovative feature nobody else could imagine.

 

Still, I kind of like all black. Some rigs are made for show or at least with the aim to look "cool". Not having random circus of colors all over the place helps with that. Wonder why they didn't paint the I/O ports. Perhaps there's a plastic cover for that, but Asus probably holds all kinds of patents on tacky "thermal covers" (Sabertooth series).

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Is that socket 2011? Or something totally new?

 

socket 2011-3

 

physically similar , but not backward compatible cause of different  electrical signal 

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Memory controller is located on the CPU, so there was never any chance of compatibility with older CPUs. Work on DDR4 spec hadn't been finished back when Socket R was being designed.

 

DDR4 is the key innovation (*cough*) here. Other stuff is what Z97 boards already have - M.2, SATA Express, native USB 3.0 all around and quite probably Realtek ALC 1150 with a range of goodies (shielded layer, funny looking caps, swappable op-amps and -wow!- LED strip).

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socket 2011-3

 

physically similar , but not backward compatible cause of different  electrical signal 

 

Ah, OK. M.2 is sweet :)

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Memory controller is located on the CPU, so there was never any chance of compatibility with older CPUs. Work on DDR4 spec hadn't been finished back when Socket R was being designed.

 

DDR4 is the key innovation (*cough*) here. Other stuff is what Z97 boards already have - M.2, SATA Express, native USB 3.0 all around and quite probably Realtek ALC 1150 with a range of goodies (shielded layer, funny looking caps, swappable op-amps and -wow!- LED strip).

 

i don't believe even X99 would have all USB3 ports

 

would be mixture usb3/usb2

 

perhaps until skylake-E ? 

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socket 2011-3

 

physically similar , but not backward compatible cause of different  electrical signal 

 

Cause they want you to buy a new mb everytime you buy a new cpu.

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Cause they want you to buy a new mb everytime you buy a new cpu.

 

They didn't for socket 1150...

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i don't believe even X99 would have all USB3 ports

 

would be mixture usb3/usb2

 

Correct, my bad. It'll have 6 USB 3.0 ports, only now native to Wellsburg chipset rather than provided by a third-party. But I fully expect more being added.

I mean, if I'm not seeing it wrong in the picture up there, there's two USB 3.0 front panel headers (4 ports) on the board alone.

 

Cause they want you to buy a new mb everytime you buy a new cpu.

 

Sir, that is nonsense. See my comment above about DDR4. There's no physical space (nor any need whatsoever) to realise co-existance DDR3 and DDR4. And DDR4 is the main selling point of this platform - AMD will not have DDR4 till at least late next year.

 

Intel's once again using Xeon dies for their new desktop line, twelve core (Source (ocdrift.com)) at that. With little doubt, Haswell-EP Xeons with crazy amount of cores, will be compatible with desktop boards. This is not a gaming or layman platform. It is HEDT - serious workstations, home servers and show-boats. With that, I expect for 5970X or something to appear later when they get inevitable first release issues out of the way.

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x79 had a few generations of cpus that worked fine

 

Dunno i don't follow hardware much but everytime i bought intel i had to buy a new mb to upgrade the cpu to a new gen.

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Dunno i don't follow hardware much but everytime i bought intel i had to buy a new mb to upgrade the cpu to a new gen.

 

You should catch up on hardware, mate.

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You should catch up on hardware, mate.

 

it's almost too difficult to at this point. Once they develop a new MOBO, release it, they are probably already working on the next. and in 6 months to a year, you'll need to buy all new again. thisis the only way the companies make serious money. if no one would upgrade, the market would fall apart.

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I have seen the motherboards come in green, mostly.

 

Are you sure you haven't been eating too much limes lately? :p

For notebooks, yes. No need and no way to show them off.

Although I often wonder why they don't make acrylic or other kinds of semi-transparent casings for notebooks. Would be a killer showboat, even if somewhat stupid looking :laugh:

 

Anyway, most desktop boards are now dark brown or black. It's just heatsinks, slots and decorative elements that remain circus colored.

I'm still rocking Gigabyte's old trademark blue. Back in the days Asus used to have this turdish orange-brown. ECS used to have a great deal of purple boards. Biostar and Intel, those were mostly green. Although then Intel jumped to blue for desktop, in accord with their trademark color.

Of course, most OEMs like HP and Dell and Lenovo also prefer green for their pre-made computers. For the same reason - no need and no way to show them off.

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it's almost too difficult to at this point. Once they develop a new MOBO, release it, they are probably already working on the next. and in 6 months to a year, you'll need to buy all new again. thisis the only way the companies make serious money. if no one would upgrade, the market would fall apart.

 

Not really. If you pay attention to what is out there, not what is coming, it's not hard at all. In 6 months, you'd already know about the current information.

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Are you sure you haven't been eating too much limes lately? :p

For notebooks, yes. No need and no way to show them off.

Although I often wonder why they don't make acrylic or other kinds of semi-transparent casings for notebooks. Would be a killer showboat, even if somewhat stupid looking :laugh:

 

Anyway, most desktop boards are now dark brown or black. It's just heatsinks, slots and decorative elements that remain circus colored.

I'm still rocking Gigabyte's old trademark blue. Back in the days Asus used to have this turdish orange-brown. ECS used to have a great deal of purple boards. Biostar and Intel, those were mostly green. Although then Intel jumped to blue for desktop, in accord with their trademark color.

Of course, most OEMs like HP and Dell and Lenovo also prefer green for their pre-made computers. For the same reason - no need and no way to show them off.

 

LOL.. I don't have limes in my house...  I kicked them out including Lime who is on other thread...  :p

 

Yes I remember blue motherboard that I was on the client's system for repair.

 

I used to build the custom builds in the past... I haven't done in the last few years. I am getting old.  That's the reason I have not kept up with the hardware products these days... :rolleyes:

 

I have my own backup tower. So I can connect to it from my laptops.

 

If I have to go on the trip, I take my laptop with me to discuss with the clients.  :D

 

I am thinking of getting a new build either this year or next to replace my backup tower..  I will see what I can do.

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it's almost too difficult to at this point. Once they develop a new MOBO, release it, they are probably already working on the next. and in 6 months to a year, you'll need to buy all new again. thisis the only way the companies make serious money. if no one would upgrade, the market would fall apart.

 

I'll let you in on a secret: you don't :rolleyes:

 

 

LOL.. I am getting old.

 

Me too (even though I'm not *that* old). I, on the other hand, am a die-hard desktop fanatic, holding a certain distaste for notebooks, smartphones, tablets and other gadgets that have taken it over nowadays :(

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Hello,

 

I actually like the look.  It reminds me of the old Intel Extreme motherboards.  Then again, I tend to focus on reliability and performance over cosmetics.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

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  • 2 months later...
I bought this board and I am disappointed. It looks good and on paper seems like it would be good. There are issues with getting SATA ports to work in a RAID configuration even though the specs and manual say that ports 1~6 will work in RAID 0/5/10. I tried to do RAID using 6 SSD's either in 0 or 5 and it will not work. If left in RAID 5 you lose port 6 and port 5 shows up empty while the array is left in a degraded state. 
Only SATA ports 1~4 will successfully create a RAID array. Even with 4 of the 6 disk in the degraded RAID 5 setup it was fast so I have some slight hope that they will update the bios or firmware to allow ports 5~6 to work. The latest bios does not fix the issue. I am awaiting MSI tech support's help. I already spent too much time swapping drives and cables to want to keep this board. RMA for a refund is looking like a better option. I will see what MSI says with my case but there are others on the MSI forums that have the same issue of using more than 4 drives in RAID.

 

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I bought this board and I am disappointed. It looks good and on paper seems like it would be good. There are issues with getting SATA ports to work in a RAID configuration even though the specs and manual say that ports 1~6 will work in RAID 0/5/10. I tried to do RAID using 6 SSD's either in 0 or 5 and it will not work. If left in RAID 5 you lose port 6 and port 5 shows up empty while the array is left in a degraded state. 
Only SATA ports 1~4 will successfully create a RAID array. Even with 4 of the 6 disk in the degraded RAID 5 setup it was fast so I have some slight hope that they will update the bios or firmware to allow ports 5~6 to work. The latest bios does not fix the issue. I am awaiting MSI tech support's help. I already spent too much time swapping drives and cables to want to keep this board. RMA for a refund is looking like a better option. I will see what MSI says with my case but there are others on the MSI forums that have the same issue of using more than 4 drives in RAID.

 

If you have a M.2 installed you will not be able to use SATA5~6.

 

Also have you connected to the right ports for Intel RAID? Ports 1-4 are top right and port 5-6 are at the very bottom where the USB header is.

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I have the correct ports. And I know how the configuration of m.2 would affect this board. I do not have a m.2 installed. Nor is it turned on. MSI has confirmed that that there is issues with the controller and has told me to return the board.

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